Accessible Games for Blind Children, Empowered by Binaural Sound

Accessible games have been researched and developed for many years, however, blind people still have very limited access and knowledge of them. This can pose a serious limitation, especially for blind children, since in recent years electronic games have become one of the most common and wide spread means of entertainment and socialization. For our implementation we use binaural technology which allows the player to hear and navigate the game space by adding localization information to the game sounds. With our implementation and user studies we provide insight on what constitutes an accessible game for blind people as well as a functional game engine for such games. The game engine developed allows the quick development of games for the visually impaired. Our work provides a good starting point for future developments on the field and, as the user studies show, was very well perceived by the visually impaired children that tried it.